Feb 23 Wasting, not wanting.

"For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee." (Isaiah 43:1)

God is extravagant in every way. In forgiveness. In mercy. In love and tenderness. Think of what it took to get Jesus to come. The combined prayers and petitions of generation upon generation. Thousands of years of toil and hardship. Obedience and sacrifice and pain. And was it wasted? Not in the slightest. Jesus paid the ultimate price, not only by taking on human form, but also experiencing a torturous, humiliating death—as a human. And feeling everything. "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." and woman. (Hebrews 2:9, emphasis mine)

"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." (Luke 15:7)

"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Mark 2:18)

This might be a difficult statement to wrap (warp?) your mind around, but if you were the only person in existence to have been created, Jesus would have died for you. This necessarily takes a lot of love for oneself. And to truly have that, one needs to grasp, however feebly, the substrate fact that God loves them.

When you know you're called to do something, how do you know? Are you less than satisfied with anything less? That's a pretty good indicator. Don't let anxiety get the better of you, though. "Be careful for nothing..." (Philippians 4:6) And cultivate contentment wherever you are. "Be content with such things as ye have." (Hebrews 13:5) All those things aside, (actually astride—without carefreeness and contentment, we'll never become the full version of who God says that we are. And worry is a waste of time: "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?" Matthew 6:27) we are moving forward, changing everyday into the person that God wants us to be. That He made us to be. Anytime we think we've arrived, and our vantage point is supreme, always know that there are better ways of seeing things. Life is more complex than we know. And the more we learn, the more we realize just how much there is that we don't know. This is the secret:

"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16)

It might seem that the more time goes by, the more days and hours are spent wherever you may be in your holding pattern, that God has somehow forgotten about you. That He's just wasting His time (and yours!) by having you toil on in what seems like an endless and dim mine. I'm telling you right here to stay the course. God has a different calendar and schedule than do we. And His thoughts are higher than ours. Because once you get to where you're going on the way to wherever it is you're headed to next, you'll look back on these days and see the expenditure that God procured through Jesus to equip you for the assignment that He has for you. It's something that only you can do and only you will do. Stay the course. Let the layers of who you used to be fall off and be "renewed in the spirit of your mind." (Ephesians 4:23) There are beautiful, wondrous days ahead. Know this. But also take time to reflect on all the effort God had to expend in order to get us to this place. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)

But it cost something: "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; And being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him." (Hebrews 5:8-9)

And after its all said and done, we get this: "And I saw a new Heaven and a new earth: for the first Heaven and the first earth were passed away..." (Revelation 21:1)